Category: Lazy Vegan Friday

We ordered a box from The Purple Carrot earlier last week. I’ve been curious about it, because despite a genuine love of food – I’m a lazy cook, or just an avoidant cook. Anything that proposes an option for us to have an easier time cooking dinner at home is something I’m interested in learning more about. One of their biggest name supporters and co-founders is Mark Bittman, and he’s also involved with recipe development, recipe testing, and also using his connections with fancy chefs all over the world to create or share interesting plant based recipes with subscribers. Currently, the box is only available in the USA. There were some rumors of a vegan meal kit in Ontario brewing last year, and I’m happy to say details have finally been released. So if you’re local, check out the Meal Kits from Globally Local. So what was in the box? Large biodegradable insulated box liner 3 large non-toxic ice packs – reusable, or drainable. 3 meal kits with ingredients with detailed full colour recipe cards. A sheet with a little story of why each dish was included this week, some pictures from real humans that made things from the Purple Carrot boxes, and a carrot talk discussion question which they suggest talking about at dinner or online. Our weeks question was easy “What’s your New Year’s Resolution for 2016” What was on the dinner menu for the next few evenings? 5-Layer Beet Tartare (recipe here) Roasted Carrots and Cilantro Basmati (recipe here) Good Luck pasta and beans…

We’re in New York City for the holidays again, and paid a visit to Haymaker’s Corner – an all vegan grocery store in Brooklyn, NY. We had pre-ordered a holiday meal from them, and some stuff from Vegan Treats – and luckily, the night before, they also got in a shipment of Follow Your Heart’s new(ish) Vegan Egg. I also ordered two boxes from Rabbit Food Grocery in Austin and had it shipped to NYC. At the moment if you wanted to order it to Canada, Vegan Essentials and Food Fight Grocery are the only two places I’ve seen offering this product with shipping to Canadian addresses. Like I mentioned when reviewing The Vegg, I never liked cheese, which seems like the ubiquitous missed vegan item (though that’s changed with all the amazing alternatives) but I have missed the occasional scrambled or over-easy egg. Of course – never enough to consider eating a non-vegan egg. So when I saw this product appear online during the Supply Side West convention in Las Vegas earlier this year, I was pretty excited to find out more. The Vegg is great for those over easy eggs yolks I was missing (with some spherification), but did not work out quite as well as I hoped as a scramble. The promo images from the trade show showed the VeganEgg was something that could be scrambled with a similar looking texture, so I was curious and interested in trying it, and ever since have been trying to figure out an effective way of getting some…

You’ve probably seen one or two of these new So Delicious Cashew based ice creams appear around the city. If not – they’re popping up everywhere – check the fridge at your local grocery. So, last week I received a box of three So Delicious Cashew Ice Creams (or, sure, CFIA, “non-dairy frozen desserts”) – Creamy Cashew, Salted Caramel Cluster, and Dark Chocolate Truffle. And two of the new-to-Canada CocoWhips. The package was hand delivered by a courier, and contained dry ice and branded So Delicious gloves – for safety, of course, and my own personal joy – they may or may not also be perfect for gardening. Anyway. I tell you this because it was an exciting package to receive, and to let you know that I’m already a fan of many of the So Delicious products, and to disclose any potential biases I have. You decide! I’ve tried and reviewed the CocoWhips before, while I was in the USA, so for now, I’m going to focus on the ice cream for this post – however, I do want to see if there are any difference between the countries and products (since those kinds of variations really interest me.) On to the Ice Cream Dark Chocolate Truffle I expected to love this one, but I didn’t. It might not have been at it’s best, flavour-wise it was delicious – as ribbons of dark chocolate in chocolate ice cream will be, but texturally, was tougher to dig into, and not as pleasant as the others. Despite…

One of the first things that came to mind after I had the opportunity to be in New York for a week last month was ordering a box of Miyoko’s Kitchen artisanal vegan cheeses. Since they don’t (and still don’t) ship to Canada, I’ve been watching people’s unboxing photos with a huge amount of envy, and a touch of heartache. We have a US mailbox, and it briefly crossed my mind to send an order there, but it’s “perishable” so that makes things a bit more complicated. Plus the 2-3 hour drive time to Niagara Falls, plus customs, plus, plus, etc. The doorman at the NYC apartment I was staying at also mentioned they normally don’t accept packages marked as perishable either, so I was glad they did this time (especially since it was the day before American Thanksgiving, and picking up a package that day would have been impossible.) I ordered the “Party Platter” which has the largest assortment of Miyoko’s Kitchen cheeses containing: Double Cream Sundried Tomato Garlic French Style Winter truffle Aged English Sharp farmhouse High Sierra Rustic alpine Fresh Loire Valley in a Fig Leaf and my order contained a limited edition Double Cream Garlic Herb What can I say that hasn’t already been said? This was one of the most exciting deliveries I’ve gotten in a long time, so I was already primed to love everything. I was never a fancy dairy cheese person, though I imagine I would have been had I not gone vegan…

I’m in New York City right now, and one of the things I love doing whenever I’m in the USA is finding products we don’t have in Toronto. A few months ago I started seeing So Delicious‘ CocoWhip appearing on friends’ and bloggers Instagram feeds and knew… I must try some. So my opportunity came this week when I saw one of the varieties (the regular variety with the blue label, as opposed to “light” in the pink label) at a Whole Foods (the one at Columbus Circle) in New York City. It has always been strange to me that “non-dairy” whipped toppings would have dairy ingredients like casein, a milk protein, (usually in the form of sodium caseinate) or other things, but it’s nice to have a similar product from So Delicious that is actually 100% dairy free. I’ve had some disappointing experiences with non-dairy dairy-filled whipped toppings, so here is hoping So Delicious brings this product to Canada sometime soon. Especially since MimicCreme has disappeared from our shelves (Since the company closed in November 2013 due to no longer having access to an appropriate production facility), and sometimes I just want an easy to use tub of whipped topping vs having to whip something for 10 minutes. (it’s called lazy vegan friday for a reason.) What’s in it? Cocowhip is gluten-free, vegan, kosher, and made with organic ingredients. At the time of this post information about Cocowhip is not available from the So Delicious website. I like to post the…

Last month we were in Detroit, and visited their Whole Foods, where we bought a bunch of things unavailable in Canada, and took them back home with us (or snacked on them immediately.) One of those things was Sweet Earth Hickory & Sage Smoked Seitan Bacon. The funny thing about buying this was that the checkout person was super excited about it, said she had never seen it before, and that it looked so good. But then she said something that made us pause and say wait a minute. “I’d eat this, but I’ve given up bacon…” We realized she thought it was an animal product. JC told her… “it’s actually vegan.” And then she was even more excited about it. The style and colour of the package was what initially attracted me to it. It looked like a pretty traditional product, and since it was something I didn’t recognize in the plant-meat section I had to take a closer look. Much later, I remembered that I had seen them at ExpoWest earlier this year where they first launched this product (but I don’t think I sampled any at that time though.) Anyway, fast forward to a few weekends ago when we were at the Piebird Birdhouse Cottage and I was thinking, what quick fun breakfast options can we enjoy while at the cottage? And my hand hovered over this package and I thought… well, of course. I don’t really have a particular attraction to bacon one way or another, but…

There is a new vegan cheese in Toronto called Maniocheese, a plant based cheese made from made from cassava (also known as tapioca, manioc or yucca), peruvian parsnip and beans, and it’s here all the way from Brazil! (There it’s known as Mandiokejo) It’s imported by Vegantage Point, and at the moment is available directly from them online, or from The Health Shoppe (41-A Charles W, Toronto). But check out their “Where to Buy” for more info. It’s not a prepared product, so there are a few steps to making it usable (as you’ll see in the picture of the directions below), so it’s not entirely lazy, but it’s a few steps easier than opening the Artisian Vegan Cheese book and picking one of those. What’s in the box? I woke up thinking of making a pizza, and decided to walk over to The Health Shoppe and pick up a box of Maniocheese. It was $7.99 before tax, and there are two packets of maniocheese powder per box. Which is approximately enough for two medium sized pizzas. What did we think? I think this product has a lot of potential uses, especially if you don’t want a cheese flavour to be central to whatever it is your making. Like putting a bunch of daiya on a pizza is great, if you want a pizza that is cheesy and melty. This one is great if you’re looking to use cheese for it’s other main pizza purpose – holding things together. The taste is subtle, but reasonably pleasant. It needs to…

Earlier this week I was wandering through Kensington Market in search of Gadein’s new Fishless-Filets that I had tried at ExpoWest, but my dreams were foiled, and replaced by new dreams – trying the (also new-to-me) Gardein Breakfast Sandwich. I found it in the Freezer section of Essence of Life, and haven’t seen it anywhere else (but if you have please share where in the comments!) Today was a lazy morning, so it seemed appropriate to crack open the box and try them out. One box had two breakfast sandwiches in it, and two slices of vegan cheese. While I usually avoid the microwave, I opted to follow the microwave instructions for maximum lazy factor and for science. The instructions for microwaving say to wrap it in a paper towel, and heat on high for 1 minute and 20 seconds. Then add the slice of cheese – and blast it for another 20 seconds. And voila, it’s on a plate, and has melted cheese on it. Ready to be eaten. For science. First impression: I LIKED it. I feel like’ I’ve heard some negative reviews of this combo, but I thought for what it was – a quick microwavable breakfast sandwich – it was surprisingly good. Actually, really surprising. The bread didn’t turn into mush, and was chewy like a toasted English muffin, the breakfast patty was tender and lightly spiced, and while the cheese wasn’t perfectly melty, it fit my requirements for what I remember of the flavour and texture…

Wegmans is a store many Ontario folks are probably familiar with, as the answer to the closest one-stop-shop for all those delightful USA vegan grocery items we might not be able to find in the USA. So on a recent trip to the USA we stopped at Wegmans on the way back home from a mini-roadtrip. It was too late to go out to eat anywhere, so we ended up looking through the natural foods/frozen foods aisle and finding a couple of potentially interesting options. What better way to encompass lazy vegan Friday than with a DIY convenience meal buffet at a 24hr grocery store? I picked up the Amy’s Kitchen Spaghetti Italiano. I was slightly put off by the Light & Lean label, as that has often mean things will taste like old cardboard. Not so much in the case of this vegan friendly fare, that said, in retrospect, I still wonder what possessed me to choose a microwavable whole grain pasta for dinner. The noodles handled their frozen and microwaved existence fairly well. Only minor grainy-ness, which you would likely expect from a “whole wheat” pasta. Sauce was surprisingly good, and while the not-meat balls were pretty soft, that might be a selling point for tender not-meat ball lovers out there. I am not saying that I would eat this for dinner everyday. But it’s not bad at all, and if you have a hankering for pasta, but no pot or stove, this would be an entirely decent…

Lazy Vegan Friday is where I talk about a prepared vegan product I’ve found somewhere in the world. Today it’s time to talk (not) turkey. On a recent trip to the USA we stopped into the new Trader Joe‘s in Buffalo, NY (1565 Niagara Falls Blvd) and saw these Turkey-Less Stuffed Roasts in the freezer section. Since it was the first day of our weekend road trip, we opted to leave it and pick it up on the way back. We never did. But some kind soul at JC’s work independently brought a package back for us that very same weekend. It’s good to have friends (especially ones that visit the USA occasionally and bring us treats.) Where do I begin with these stuffed turkey-less roasts? First of all I’d like to point out that on the back of the package it says it’s a product of CANADA. Why am I not eating this everyday? Why can’t I buy them and stuff my freezer with them and have nice little pods of not-turkey, stuffed with cranberry and other stuff? In short, I liked this whole bunch, and I would eat it again, and will buy it the next time I find myself at a Trader Joe’s (or find out who their Canadian source is – anyone have any hot tips?) (EDIT: Hot Tip has been received from Nicole – check out the Gardein Savory Stuffed Turkey in Canada – it looks very much like the same product.) This is what the two turkey-less…